← Middays With Matt
Middays With Matt
Jayden Daniels is petty (Thurs 8/13 - Seg 6)
00:23:23
Jayden Daniels sends a cease and desist to LSU over the #5.
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Things are never normal in college football. Just kind of one of those things
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where
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we talked about it earlier in the show where ESPN goes ahead and they're talking about the playoff expansion. Right. CFP committee met on Monday. They go, hey, we're going to discuss. We're going to 16 teams or 24 teams. ESPN has a secret meeting with the SEC so they can have this weird 20 team format that nobody has ever talked about, that they hid from Tony Petiti. One of the people who literally has to okay the decision to expand to whatever number they want to expand to which College Football Playoff expansion at this point is, is, you know, that's what we're doing.
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Yep.
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You know, we're, that's happening, that's going to occur and, and them doing that back room me, I'm like, this is so weird. This is so strange. Like this, this, like this sport can't get weirder in terms like even the people who are meant to like work together and communicate together are still doing shady backroom stuff. Until something came across my desk today where man pettiness and college football go together like peanut butter and jelly. As long as college football exists, petty things will occur. Petty things will happen. People will get their feelings hurt. Honestly, feelings getting hurt in college football is a tale as old as time. And I think it actually is one of the things that makes college football incredibly unique and at times special. This one that I'm about to mention. This petty occurrence that's happening between Jaden Daniels and the LSU is not one of those cute, fun little haha petty things. This is one of those, wow, this is just random. And people are very upset about things that they shouldn't be upset about. So here's what's going on. It was tweeted out yesterday from Ari Marof that quarterback Jaden Daniels, through his attorney, informed LSU it can no longer use his name, image or likeness after the school allowed another player to wear his number five jersey. Daniel says he feels profoundly disrespected and he believe he's, he believes he's being treated differently than Joe Burrow. Because since Joe Burrow won the Heisman, the number 9 has not been has not been worn at LSU. Now you might ask, is Jaden Daniels numbered? Retired? No, it's not. Nope. LSU has five football players with retired jerseys. Billy Cannon number 20, Charles Alexander, number four, Jerry Stovall, number 21, Tyler, Tommy Casanova, number 37 and Bert Jones number seven. None of those numbers include Jane Jaden Daniels, number five. Now, Mayor Rob is right and Daniels is right. Since Joe Burrow has won the Heisman Trophy, like Jaden Daniels later won the Heisman Trophy after Burrow, his number has not been worn yet. There is a player on LSU who's being allowed to wear the number five jersey. His name is D.J. pickett. Pickett was a five star cornerback when he signed with LSU out of Florida with the class of 2025. Pickett signing with LSU and this is according to Louisianasports.net.net Pickett signing with LSU was contingent upon wearing number five. A source said it was a stipulation discussed with all three of his finalists, including Oregon and Miami. He has worn number five every year of his football career until last season. Despite him him being promised the number during his recruitment, former coach Brian Kelly told ESPN he was not willing to issue the number without Daniels's blessing. Picket wore number three in 2025 as a true freshman where he earned freshman All American honors. Lane Kiffin now becomes the head coach of lsu. And I guess Pickett was like, look, I'm one of your best players. I'm gonna be a very important part of your roster. I stayed here, you coming here, by the way, I signed here with the idea that I was going to be allowed to wear my childhood number, number five. Can I please wear my number? Well, they gave him the number and then he was on promotional things for LSU's upcoming football season to the point with where now Jaden Daniels wants nothing to do with lsu. So much so that this is a tweet from Matt Moscana. Moscana is a publisher on Louisiana sports.net the story I was just referencing he tweeted at 1105am this is about an hour ago. The LSU Jaden Daniel saga has taken another strange turn. Sources confirmed Daniels camp wants LSU to return its copy of the Heisman Trophy, something LSU has zero intention of doing. Daniels contacted LSU leadership before fall camp. Lane Kiffin has spoken personally to Daniels. So out of nowhere, out of left field, Jaden Daniels is pissed that a player who really wants to wear the number five, by the way, literally put in his contract and that contract was not honored, literally came out that I want nothing to do with you. It is, it is so weird. It is so strange to me. I mean, I don't, like, I totally understand it from the perspective of if Daniel's number had been retired and it was up in Death Valley, right? And like it was there and it was honored and it was enshrined and they told a recruit, hey, you can wear this fully retired number in order for you to play here. I would totally understand Daniel's being upset. What do you mean? It just takes a five star recruit to tell you you can't continue to honor me. Screw that. That guy's done nothing for you. Keep my, my number retired. The problem is his number was never retired. And you could say what you want about Burrow and him winning the Heisman Trophy and Burrow's number not being used. The number nine hasn't been worn at LSU since Joe Burrow won the Heisman. I would like to remind Jaden Daniels that Joe Burrow just didn't win the Heisman. Joe Burrow won a national championship. Joe Burrow led one of the best college football teams ever. Like, statistically, analytically, even through like draft prospect wise, right? There are so many guys. Remember we had that segment yesterday with Michigan. Their 2023 team had all those guys drafted in 24, and they ended up being terrible. There are so many guys from the LSU roster who got drafted into the NFL who ended up being awesome, who ended up being phenomenal. Justin Jefferson, Jamar Chase, Joe burrow. Like that 2019 LSU roster has the potential of having like multiple gold jacket guys. That's. That's how good that team was. Jaden Daniels, hell of a year, don't get me wrong. Awesome quarterback for lsu. But he, you know, there's, there's levels to this. There's levels. Run 65, bear goes Daniels. Did. Did he win a national championship? No, he didn't. He didn't. So I don't know. I think it's. I think it's. I think it's petty. I think LSU could have done a lot better job of trying to communicate this with him clearly if they thought it was going to be disrespectful. But I mean, I, I don't know, man. His number's not retired yet. It will have. I mean, maybe it will be eventually. Maybe they will just officially retire it one day. But I just, I don't understand the taking this public and writing it. They wrote a Cisco Desist letter to this guy. It's wild. I was interested what bowl game they went to that season. Oh, go ahead. Yes. What bowl game? Reliaque bowl against Wisconsin is what was led to for Jaden Daniels. So Jaden Daniels now wants nothing to do with lsu. Absolutely phenomenal. Absolutely great. And there's more. There's. There's now a bunch of. I mean, it's just soft. It's just very soft of. And by the way, I kind of. I. I don't know this DJ pick guy. I don't know his character. I don't really know him. You know, obviously, like, I don't have a ton of knowledge on him. I know there's really good players. Freshman All American last year. Kind of feel bad that now he's getting thrown in the middle of this too, where it's like all his fault that like LSU and, and their Heisman Trophy quarterback are now estranged in this relationship. It's just another weird little turn that you continue to take. Once again, college football is a weird sport and it is awesome because it is weird like that. But then you get stories like this where it's like, what? What are we doing? What. I mean, what are we talking about? Speaking about college sports. Did you read and at this Athletic article today, Jake, Janice, like, about Dusky May. Did you see this? Did you hear about this? So I don't know if Dusky May has gone on a media tour since leaving Michigan to go to the Dallas Mavericks. It was a, it was a big deal when it happened. Obviously. It really happened out of nowhere. Honestly, it was something that I thought would happen with John Shire because I said multiple times that I wanted Duke to win the national championship in part because I thought that Shire would leave if he won a national championship with Duke and maybe my Chicago Bulls could hire the White Mike and bring him back home to Chicago. But instead, because he didn't win the national championship, he decided to stay at Duke. He did get off at the Dallas Mavericks job, John. John Shire did, but turned it down because he wanted to win a title with Duke. Well, it went to Dusky May and It's funny. So C.J. moore of the Athletic writes this article where May. It's not necessarily. It's not as dramatic as a tell all, but it's, it's Dusky May kind of saying to you what we kind of already knew, which is he was so sick and tired of everything going on in college basketball. This is from C.J. moore. When Dallas Mavericks general manager Mike Schmitz called to pick up Dusky May's brain called to pick Dusky May's brain about Michigan's three NBA draft prospects a day, Mara Morez Johnson and Yaxel Lindenborg. On the morning of May 24, he asked one question that got the ball rolling toward May leaving the school he just won a championship with to the coach of the Mavericks. Schmidt asked May, quote, would you have any interest in this job? Schmitz's timing was perfect, May told him. May had just returned home for the Big Ten spring meetings, where the league's coaches met to discuss, among other things, the state of the game. This is a quote from May, quote, May said, I was so excited for the Big Ten meetings, like we are going to find some solutions. May told the Athletic. Quote continues, I go there and I was just like, oh, my God, nothing's getting fixed ever. May continued, another quote from here, we've got to stop talking about all the stuff that we can't change. And later in the article, he kind of reveals that he didn't have any intention of leaving before that Big Ten spring meeting. He goes to the Big Ten spring meeting. He does not get the answers that he was looking for. He had an interest in repeating as national champions, like he. He wanted to chase that. That was the goal. That was something out there for him to go after. And he decided against it because. And this is kind of the quote that, that puts this whole thing together. He says in the Athletic article, quote, I just spent so much more of my time doing everything but coaching, end quote. I think this article, and I think like, the story of destiny, May, like, there's. There's two ways of looking at it. Is it. This really just had to do with circumstance. May just won a title. He just accomplished the ultimate goal. Mike Schmitz is somebody. He's known for a long portion of his career. The Dallas Mavericks just hired Nasai Ujiri to be their president of basketball operations. He's the guy who put together the 2019 Toronto Raptors team and is heralded as one of the best creators of basketball franchises really in the game right now. Cooper Flag is your superstar of. Of the future for Dallas. Like, May doesn't have to worry about getting a guy like that. Was. Was this all pomp and circumstance? Was this all just okay? Hey, like, it all kind of fell together for Dusky May. Enough people said no, and he was able to pick up the pieces of what could be a very, very good job for him in which he's going to get paid a, a ton, a ton of money. And if this ends up failing, then he just goes back and he gets paid a boatload of money to go and coach somewhere else in college basketball because that's what happens. I, I think the risk reward here for Dusty May is super slanted, right? The, the risk is you, you leave your national championship job, you leave a place in Michigan that is willing to invest in your basketball roster. You leave a place you know without a doubt that you can win a national championship in. That's the risk. But the reward is, okay, you go to the NBA, something that May admits in this article he wanted to do. You go there, you win there, you build your legacy. You're one of kind of the few coaches who can do both. We've seen plenty of coaches, you know, fail or relative to expectation failure at the NBA level after being successful in college basketball. You could build your legacy as one of the, you know, rare people who could do both. And maybe you want an NBA championship when we look at dusk. Hell, man, he can do. He, he, he's a high level coach at both college basketball and the NBA. That's insane. Or he fails. But then what really happens when he fails? He fails. He gets fired. All right, well, he goes back to college basketball and the best team out there is going to ask him to be their head coach. He's immediately going to go back to a program that is going to be willing to invest in him for him to win in college basketball once again. So like to me, the risk reward, I don't know, there's a bit of a risk, but not much as you would think leaving a job like Michigan. But I think back to my original question, May. Leaving college basketball and this article in particular. Is this a circumstance or is this a warning for athletic directors and the future of college basketball? Did this just happen because it happened or should athletic directors be wary of. Man, we have some really good coaches, some high level guys who make the game better, who make our conferences better, who make our players better, which in tow. College basketball had one of the best years from a viewership, ratings, interest perspective it's had in a long time, right? Fox was up, we talked about this in February. Fox was up in all ratings. ESPN and their families, they were all up in ratings. People were in on college basketball. College basketball got hot even before March. We which for college basketball fans, it really has been looked at as a sport of most people. Most die hards go, all right, we understand, 60, 70% of the people who are interested in this, we'll see in March, we'll see it during the conference tournaments, we'll see during the NCAA tournaments. There was building momentum though, from January, February to March. And maybe it had to do with the transfer portal and had to do with teams getting better real quickly and things flipping around and conferences being competitive. Right. Like, I don't think we ever necessarily got to, you know, I think also too, it has a lot to do with, we saw it this year, like guys who used to be second round draft picks, guys who used to just leave right away for the NBA, you know, and be taken with the 40th, the 50th picks in the draft. They now stay in college basketball because of nil, because of the money, because of what they can get paid. And because they get paid that money, you have top college basketball players who previous years would have left that are now staying, which makes your product better. College basketball is growing in popularity. The numbers show it. The numbers stated. Yet a top college basketball coach in dusky May goes, I'm done. I want nothing to do with this. I spend way too much time going to country clubs. I spend way too much time doing, talking to donors. I spend way too much time having drinks, begging people, some of whom may I, I may have never met before, to give me a wing player for my team, to, to get me a point guard, to get me a center. I have to spend all of my time, you know, schmoozing and whining and dining and making sure that my roster can actually be intact. More so than I'm talking about how we're going to run Horns against Michigan State on February 13th in East Lansing. A guy like Dusty May signed up to coach basketball. He didn't sign up to, you know, share or d' oeuvres with a local Ann Arbor engineer owner. Right? So he could go and go ahead and make sure they could pay Mustafa Tom, like, that's not what May signed up for. And I guarantee you that's not what a lot of these college basketball coaches signed up for. So I'll ask the question again and I'd love to interview an ad. I would love to. I have so many questions for these people, these crazy individuals who, you know, like just, just an athletic director job in college sports is not something that I would sign up to do right now. I'd love to ask him, do you read the dusky May article? And do you read him saying, I can't stand this anymore, I'm Done with this sport. Thank God I can go to Dallas. Do you read that and say, man, I'm worried about the health of whether or not coaches still want to be doing this? Or do you go, eh, he knew Schmidt's Euge is too good to say no to Cooper. Flag's a superstar. That position's made for you to walk in and be good. Right away you got all the pieces that you would want from, from an NBA franchise perspective. Do athletic directors read that and go, oof? Guys, we got to think about, we got to think about how these coaches are handling this. Because when we lose quality coaches, the quality of the game goes down. When the quality of the game goes down, that's when the interest, you know, it's a snowball effect, right? What if next year John Shire wins at Duke and goes to the NBA? What if the year after that Todd golden wins his second title with Florida, he goes to the NBA. I mean, college basketball does not want to be the place. And, and, and you know, it never. You had college coaches who are college coaches, but you definitely don't want to go the path of like you have college coaches who are wishing for their success so they can get out of it and coach basketball in the NBA. You don't want that to happen. Now we could just also get to the point where NBA teams are like, oh, dusky may fail. Well, we're done going to college basketball. Coaches Run 65 Bears writes here, the wild, wild West. Unlimited free agency, no loyalty, no long term commitment. It's a lot. Coaches want to coach and be the ultimate authority. They don't want to babysit, babysit. They want, they want to do. It's interesting you write that Bears, because here's the thing. May talks about contracts and May talks about, you know, contracts being binded and we need more binding contracts. He's the second guy I've heard this week talk about that. Jed Fish went on Rich Eisen. I listened to that interview on YouTube a couple yesterday and Jed Fish, the head coach of Washington, said the same thing. And what was interesting though, what Fish said is he didn't just say we need binding contracts for players. He also kind of pointed the thumb and said we need binding contracts for coaches. Which he's the first I've heard say that, at least publicly. That's the first I've heard of a coach being like, it ain't just about we need to keep the players on board. We need to keep the coaches on board. That's what we need to do. Which I I, I, which by the way, I agree with, I, I kind of agree with that. Look at the NFL, right? If you want to get a coach from a another team and they're not and their contract isn't up, you have to trade for them. You have to ask permission. You have to be. Same thing with the NBA, right? Where the New York Knicks when the, before they hired Mike Brown they wanted to interview all of these different head coaches across the NBA. The NBA was like, get the hell out of here. We're not going to let you take poach our coaches. We're not going to give you permission to interview these people. Get out of here. I, I think it's just very interesting to hear a college football coach go, yeah, we kind of need to have if we're going to be a pro sport league, if we're going to have collective bargaining, if we're going to have contracts that the players have to agree with, probably should have the same standards for coaches and he goes to have contracts, the players have to unionize and have a CBA with the NCAA or whichever body would represent the university. Andy, you're right and I'm not, I'm not getting into that, I'm not getting into that weed. Right. But it's just interesting, I'm just more so pointing out it's interesting to hear, you know, the binding contracts being a point. But then Jed Fish, I, I admire him, I admire him for being like it's not because it's easy to blame the players guys, it's easy to blame the guys who go to four different teams in four years. It's easy to blame the guys who agree to contracts here but then give, you know, they're given bigger contracts elsewhere and they void their contracts and go like it's easy to blame those players. But I, I, I think it's admirable of Jed Fish could point the thumb and say, hey, we ain't Saints either. What Lane Kiffin did ain't what this sport is about. I found that to be very interesting. We'll take some text, we'll go to the Equitable Bank Zone inbox. We'll read some emails. 429-516-2020 if you want to get on the convers on the Prairie Flower Casino Zone hotline/text line. 402-95-1620 Prairie Flower Casino Play longer, win more and don't forget to reach out to us at the Liquid Trucking Zone Twitter feed at Jake janosek@matt mc media. We'll take some of your calls, take some of your texts, take some of your emails. We'll talk about Russell Westbrook along with buy, sell, holder, bet coming up at 1 o'. Clock. And Lauren Michelson of K TV going to be interviewed here after volleyball media days for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Uh, they're tumultuous, traveling, flying everywhere. Beginning of the regular season starts in a nick of time. So we will talk to Lauren all about that coming up next here on mwm.
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